


Real

by belmanoir



Category: Literary RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-04
Updated: 2012-04-04
Packaged: 2017-11-03 01:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belmanoir/pseuds/belmanoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shelley has a disturbing vision.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Real

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a Polidori party, Halloween 2007. It will make more sense if you read this passage from [this website](http://www.english.uga.edu/nhilton/lexis_complexes/chap2.html):
> 
> To return to the early hours of June 18, 1816, and Polidori's account: Byron repeated some verses of the poem, "of the witch's breast, when silence ensued, and Shelley, suddenly shrieking and putting his hands to his head, ran out of the room with a candle. ... He was looking at Mrs. Shelley [i.e. Mary Godwin], and suddenly thought of a woman he had heard of who had eyes instead of nipples, which taking hold of his mind, horrified him." Mary Godwin, who even as a child had heard Christabel's author recite his poetry at her home, reportedly knew firsthand that "the horror that Coleridge meant to attach to the Ladie in Christabel was two eyes in her bosom" and no doubt shared this image with her lover, so preparing the way for the hallucination of which she herself was to be the victim. Already in "Alastor" Shelley had fused "That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes" (l. 601), and in "The Witch of Atlas," the appearance of "bosom-eyed" figures (l. 136), suggests a familiarity with residual effects and affects of unsuccessful early nurturing in a projected fearful sense of parental reproach, the consequence of the infant's anger and frustration over oral deprivation.

"Shelley, what the devil is the matter? I explained to your friends that people _have_ been known to run screaming from the room when I start reciting poetry, but that didn't in the least satisfy them." Byron sounded bored, but his eyes were careful as they scanned Shelley's white face and shaking hands.

"Christ, Byron, I think I've had a vision. A terrible vision, like something out of a nightmare---"

"Good Lord," Byron said, reaching out and covering Shelley's shaking hands with his own, "has Polidori been slipping you laudanum out of his physician's case?"

Shelley shook his head.

"Come now," Byron said gently. "What did you see?"

Shelley shuddered. "I was looking at Mary, and suddenly I thought her breasts had _eyes_ , and they were _staring_ at me---" His hands clenched around Byron's.

"Oh, is that all? Sometimes I think the damn things _do_ have eyes instead of nipples like a flesh-and-blood woman. Mary is so desperately _intellectual_ , Shelley."

"So am I," Shelley pointed out with a faint smile.

"Of course you are," Byron said, moving his thumb in slow circles over Shelley's wrist. "But that sort of painful earnestness can be charming in a man. In a girl it is merely dull."

Shelley glared, some color coming back into his cheeks. "I'll thank you not to insult the woman with whom I've chosen to share my home and my life."

"I daresay you would thank me for any number of things I've no intention of doing," Byron said with a lazy smile, tugging Shelley closer. "And then, too, there are things I very _much_ intend to do that you sometimes don't seem in the least grateful for."

Shelley blushed. "I _am_ grateful for them," he said in a low voice. "I---"

Byron sealed Shelley's trembling lips with his own. "Forget visions," he murmured against Shelley's mouth. "This is what's real."


End file.
